The widespread use of the Internet has brought forth a number of generic electronic document management solutions, particularly as applied to the World Wide Web (hereinafter “Web”).
For example, the DocuTouch website (found at www.docutouch.com) appears to advertise a service with collaboration, authentication, repository, and digital signatures functionality.
In another example, the NetDocuments website (found at www.netdocuments.com) appears to advertise a service designed for document storage, collaboration, and management.
In another example, the DocuLogic website (found at www.doculogic.com) appears to advertise a service with document imaging, storage, and access functionality.
In another example, the Cimage website (found at www.cimage.com) appears to advertise a “Document Manager” portfolio consisting of a range of client, server, and Internet-based products for creating document management systems.
In another example, the FilesOnTheNet.com website (found at www.filesonthenet.com) appears to advertise an Internet-based document management service with scanning, indexing, sending, and viewing functionality.
Nevertheless, such conventional electronic document management solutions generally fail to provide a mechanism for permitting a “single sign-on” process across at lease two websites owned by different organizations. Furthermore, such conventional electronic document management solutions generally fail to implement a “security context” mechanism which ensures that only “slices” of information are available to a user signing-in from a given external website.
Among those benefits and improvements that have been disclosed, other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying figures. The figures constitute a part of this specification and include an illustrative embodiment of the present invention and illustrate various objects and features thereof.